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Patrick Joseph "P. J." Kennedy was an Irish-American businessman and politician, a major figure in the Democratic Party in Boston, and the grandfather of President John F. Kennedy. The son of Irish immigrants, he was the only surviving male in the family, following two outbreaks of cholera, and started work at fourteen as a stevedore in the docks. Presently he owned three saloons and a whisky import house, and would eventually have major interests in coal and banking. He moved successfully into politics, as a sociable man able to mix comfortably with both the Irish and the protestant elite, and he sat in the Massachusetts House of Representatives and in the Massachusetts Senate. His particular talent was for the behind-the-scenes machinations for which Boston politics became so notorious.